Punk is a lifestyle for Joe Sib. The former vocalist for the band Wax, is the co-owner of Side One Dummy Records and the host of “Complete Control,” a national radio show (on 98.7 FM in the Los Angeles area) focused on punk music. He’s also married with two children and has a home in Glendale. All of this is fodder for his standup comedy act, which Sib brings to the Ice House Comedy Club in Pasadena Thursday during “Comics with Kids,” with Kira Soltanovich and Jason Collings.

“When I was playing music, a producer once told me to write every day because it’s like a muscle and if you don’t work that muscle, then when you go to it, it won’t be stretched out and you won’t have the material that you need,” Sib said.

Sib gets most of his inspiration after his first cup of morning coffee or when he is out running. He gets many of his ideas from what people say. If something makes him laugh, he will put it into his act. For example, Sib’s 8-year-old son may say something with the utmost sincerity, but it ends up as a barb in one of Sib’s stories on stage.

Sib likes comedy because you can write a joke in the morning, try it out on someone during the day and perform it on stage that night.

“(When) you serve something out there to the universe and the audience, that’s where the real test comes,” Sib said. “Once you see the connection with the audience, you can keep building upon it.”

Being alone is Sib’s least favorite part of being a comedian. In a band, he was traveling, eating, performing and spending his time with three other men. The first day out on the road, Sib relishes the quiet, but then he begins to feel lonely and finds himself arriving earlier and earlier at the club just to be around people.

“It has its ups and downs. If you hit it out of the park, high fives for everybody, but when you’re totally failing miserably on stage and it’s not going well, which has happened to me a million times, there’s only one person to blame on the ride home that night and it’s me,” Sib said.

Growing up in Northern California, Sib used comedy to entertain his family, as well as a way to make new friends and avoid fights.

“I’d get kids who weren’t normally that friendly to laugh and they’re like, ‘Let’s not beat up Joe Sib, he’s cool. He makes me laugh. We can’t beat up the guy that makes us laugh because we won’t have anyone to entertain us,’” Sib said.

Still, he never thought he would go into comedy as a career because Sib wanted to be a rock star. While fronting bands, when the show hit a lull, such as when a guitar string broke, he would talk to the audience and his humor shined through. His music career was shelved when Sib became a family man. By his early 40s, Sib wanted to get back on stage, but didn’t want to be “the old guy in the band.”

“There is something in playing rock music and especially punk rock that you still want to be relevant,” Sib said.

He wrote his one-man show, “California Calling: A Story of Growing Up Punk Rock.” When Sib was on tour in 2009, comedy clubs began asking him to bring “California Calling” to their venues. He did and decided he wanted to try standup.

“It was really difficult at first because I was like, ‘What am I going to talk about that these people in their 30s or 20s that come to eat chicken wings and nachos and drink two drinks are going to make them laugh?’,” Sib said.

He discovered that his best material was not stories made up about wild times as a musician, but rather tales from real life as a husband and parent.

Sib hopes that when people leave his show they will not only come away happy, but also have a new perspective on at least one of his topics.

“In comedy, I’m totally real with where I’m at. I doubt that what the world needs is a 46-year-old comedian that looks like an Italian version of the Fonz,” Sib said. “I just want to continue learning and building the art. There’s so much to learn, I just want to become great at the art.”

Michelle Mills has been an entertainment and features reporter for the Southern California News Group since 1999. She has interviewed such notables as "Weird Al" Yankovic, Glen Campbell, Alice Cooper, Debbie Allen, Ernest Borgnine (during an earthquake) and Adam Young (Owl City). She was the 31st Occasional Pasadena Doo Dah Parade Queen reigning 2007-2009. She is a professional belly dancer (swordwork is her specialty) and also studies Polynesian and Tahitian dance.

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